It is more than a man can bear." "It is indeed!" answered Corbario in a low voice and looking away.
Almost the same phrases were exchanged each time that the two men came to the villa about the business, and when they left they never failed to look at each other gravely and to remark that Folco was a person of the deepest feeling, to whom such an awful trial was almost worse than death; and the elder lawyer, who was of a religious turn of mind, said that if such a calamity befell him he would retire from the world, but the younger answered that, for his part, he would travel and see the world and try to divert his thoughts.

In their different ways they were hard-headed, experienced men; yet neither of them suspected for a moment that there was anything wrong.

Both were honestly convinced that Folco had been a model husband to his dead wife, and a model father to her lost son.

What they could not understand was that he should not find consolation in possessing their millions, and they could only account for the fact by calling him a person of the deepest feeling--a feeling, indeed, quite past their comprehension.
Even the Contessa dell' Armi was impressed by the unmistakable signs of suffering in his face.

She went twice to see him within three weeks after her friend's death, and she came away convinced that she had misjudged him.